After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Yours
are ordinary. 
Mine
are too small.” 
“No, I like your breasts. They’re very elegantly shaped, and they give this 
intellectual
impression.” 
“That’s ridiculous. They’re too small, and they’re different sizes. I have trouble 
buying bras because one side is bigger than the other.” 
“Really? I guess we all have our issues.” 
“Exactly. Now go to sleep,” Aomame said. 
Ayumi stretched her arm down and started to put a finger into Aomame’s pajamas. 
Aomame grabbed her hand. 
“No, you promised.” 
“Sorry,” Ayumi said, pulling her hand back. “You’re right, I did promise, didn’t I? 
I must be drunk. But I’m crazy about you. Like some mousy little high school girl.” 
Aomame said nothing. 
Almost whispering, Ayumi said, “What I think is that you’re saving the one thing 
that’s most important to you for that boy. It’s true, isn’t it? I envy you. That you’ve 
got somebody to save yourself for.” 
She could be right
, Aomame thought. 
But what
is 
the one thing that’s most 
important to me?
“Now go to sleep,” Aomame said. “I’ll hold you until you fall asleep.” 
“Thank you,” Ayumi said. “Sorry for putting you to so much trouble.” 
“Don’t apologize. This is no trouble.” 
Aomame continued to feel Ayumi’s warm breath against her side. A dog howled in 
the distance, and someone slammed a window shut. All the while, Aomame kept 
stroking Ayumi’s hair. 
Aomame slipped out of bed after Ayumi was sound asleep. She would be the one 
sleeping on the sofa tonight, it seemed. She took a bottle of mineral water from the 
refrigerator and drank two glasses from it. Then she stepped out onto her small 
balcony and sat in an aluminum chair, looking at the neighborhood stretched out 
below. It was a soft spring night. The breeze carried the roar of distant streets like a 

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man-made ocean. The glitter of neon had diminished somewhat now that midnight 
had passed. 
I’m fond of this girl Ayumi, no doubt about it. I want to be as good to her as I can. 
After Tamaki died, I made up my mind to live without deep ties to anyone. I never 
once felt that I wanted a new friend. But for some reason I feel my heart opening to 
Ayumi. I can even confess my true feelings to her with a certain degree of honesty. 
She is totally different from you, of course
, Aomame said to the Tamaki inside. 
You 
are special. I grew up with you. No one else can compare
. 
Aomame leaned her head back and looked up at the sky for a time. Even as her 
eyes took in the sky, her mind wandered through distant memories. The time she 
spent with Tamaki, the talking they did, and the touching.… Soon, she began to sense 
that the night sky she saw above her was somehow different from the sky she was 
used to seeing. The strangeness of it was subtle but undeniable. 
Some time had to pass before she was able to grasp what the difference was. And 
even after she had grasped it, she had to work hard to accept it. What her vision had 
seized upon, her mind could not easily confirm. 
There were two moons in the sky—a small moon and a large one. They were 
floating there side by side. The large one was the usual moon that she had always 
seen. It was nearly full, and yellow. But there was another moon right next to it. It had 
an unfamiliar shape. It was somewhat lopsided, and greenish, as though thinly 
covered with moss. This was what her vision had seized upon. 
Aomame stared at the two moons with narrowed eyes. Then she closed her eyes, 
let a moment pass, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again, expecting to find 
that everything had returned to normal and there was only one moon. But nothing had 
changed. The light was not playing tricks on her, nor had her eyesight gone strange. 
There could be no doubt that two moons were clearly floating in the sky side by 
side—a yellow one and a green one. 
She thought of waking Ayumi to ask if there really were two moons up there, but 
she decided against it. Ayumi might say, “Of 
course
there are two moons in the sky. 
They increased in number last year.” Or then again, she might say, “What are you 
talking about? There’s only one moon up there. Something must be wrong with your 
eyes.” Neither response would solve the problem now facing her. Both would only 
deepen it. 
Aomame raised her hands to cover the lower half of her face, and she continued 
staring at the two moons. 
Something is happening, for sure
, she thought. Her 
heartbeat sped up. 
Something’s wrong with the world, or something’s wrong with me: 
one or the other. The bottle and the cap don’t fit: is the problem with the bottle or the 
cap?
She went back inside, locked the balcony door, and drew the curtain. She took a 
bottle of brandy from the cabinet and poured herself a glassful. Ayumi was sleeping 
nicely in bed, her breathing deep and even. Aomame kept watch over her and took a 
sip of brandy now and then. Planting her elbows on the kitchen table, she struggled 
not to think about what lay beyond the curtain. 
Maybe the world really is ending
, she thought. 
“And the kingdom is coming,” Aomame muttered to herself. 
“I can hardly wait,” somebody said somewhere. 

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